fennel creek trail

Fortunato fought for my neighborhood

My neighborhood in Bonney Lake has been the recent target of the city for its pet project called the Fennel Creek Trail.

You see, I live down a small, private and quiet dead-end street in Bonney Lake. The city, through a tax foreclosure, ended up with a very small, useless strip of land between my house and my neighbor in 2007 at the end of our cul-de-sac.

It has no distinction from my yard at all. In fact, it just blends into my yard and I have been maintaining it for 15 years.

Not once has the city ever come down to offer to cut the grass or even give me a thank you for maintaining it or reimburse me for the quarterly weed maintenance I do, but one day last year the pet project manager Gary Leaf along with the City Council decided that our small dead-end street would be the newest target for unwanted public access to the new trail.

Once we figured out what the city was up to, we, collectively as a neighborhood, had demanded a private meeting with the mayor, council and pet project manager Gary Leaf.

It was clear by their tone that they had no interest in our issues with trail access through our street. Those issues consisted of guaranteed neighborhood crime, property value decline and the safety of our children that play in our street.

They will argue that the opposite is true, but I have countless articles and research from the National Association of Reversionary Property Owners that these trails do bring crime and unwanted people into our neighborhoods.

This would have been a quick getaway access for any thief to disappear into the acres of woods behind our home and would cause a great deal of unwanted stress to our neighborhood.

Since the city did not want to listen to our concerns, I started to reach out to my elected officials to see what could be done to stop the city’s intrusion.

The person that contacted me first was Alex from Phil Fortunato’s Olympia office. He was great to deal with and put me in contact with Phil.

Phil actually came down to our neighborhood and talked with us face-to-face about the issue. He said this is an absolutely stupid idea to bring this trail through our street.

From there he was off on a mission to save our street. He and his team met with the city about this trail proposal. The city said they chose our street because it was the cheapest way for them to get the trail moving forward, never mind the chaos that would be thrust upon our neighborhood; it was apparently all about the mighty trail.

To make a very long story shorter, Phil was able to move some money around through the last budget and allocate it to the city so they could change their route and stay out of our neighborhood.

I have heard some of Phil’s opponents say that he does nothing for this state and I say, “well if you are a tax loving progressive then you may agree with that.” However, I will tell you first hand that Phil cares deeply for our state, our neighborhoods and communities, our property rights, and most of all our freedoms that we hold.

Phil works hard to fight back against this progressive choke hold that hamstrings our capital. He fights against the phony carbon tax, the capital gains tax, income tax proposals, property tax increases, gas tax increases (via ST3), sales tax increases, on and on and on. Common denominator here is tax, tax, tax! And the newest and latest great idea brought to you by the socialists of Seattle is the head tax. We are being taxed out of our own properties, our own cars, and taxed out of our minds.

The man that stands up against those taxes and fights for people’s rights is Phil Fortunato, and I can’t thank him, and his team, enough for standing strong with 95th Street.

Shawn Tetter

Bonney Lake